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WHAT YOU SHOULD 
TELL YOUR BOY 



BOOKS BY 
EDMUND THOMAS 



WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR 
BOY Price, net 50 cents 



WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR 
GIRL In preparation 



YOUNG MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF 
HIMSELF In preparation 



YOUNG WOMAN'S KNOWLEDGE 
OF HERSELF In preparation 



WHAT YOU SHOULD 
TELL YOUR BOY 



BY 
EDMUND THOMAS 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
BY 

DR. A. E. WINSHIP 



£fom fork 
THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 






Copyright, 1913, by 
THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



All rights reserved 



©CI.A347707 






DEDICATED TO 

THE AMERICAN BOY 



FOREWORD 

America is the one great nation that 
faces all problems, civic, industrial and 
social. Switzerland and Australia are 
merely vest pocket editions of problem- 
solving nations. In America all prob- 
lems, individual and socialistic, are gi- 
gantic. 

The future of America will depend en- 
tirely upon how we face these problems. 
If we plunge at them with Titanic fury, 
we are liable to collapse at any time, and 
the more magnificent we are the more 
suddenly we go to the depths. 

America will find no safe harbor un- 
less she charts the seas for derelicts and 
icebergs as well as for rocks and shoals. 



FOREWORD 

There must be no conceit that the only- 
dangers are those that are anchored in 
conventionalities and traditions. 

The great problem of America is the 
making of boys manly and girls wom- 
anly. Nothing can save America but the 
heightening of personal honor and indi- 
vidual purity. Deeper than action of 
legislature, court and executive is that 
of uplifting all the people of the future 
through the noblest inspiration of the 
young people. 

There is no nobler mission than the 
attempt to solve the problem of per- 
sonal honor and purity of the young 
people. 

There can be no higher, holier mes- 
sage than to the young men and women, 
on the one hand warning against per- 
sonal danger, and on the other inspiring 



FOREWORD 

them to save their associates from the 
degradation of impurity of speech, 
thought aud life. 

There is no denying the fact that we 
are reaping a frightful harvest from 
tares sown by men in all walks of life 
from the ministry to the saloon, through 
witty, smutty stories that have been vul- 
gar and sensual. 

What is known as sex hygiene is 
among boys and girls what spraying is 
to noxious insects in bacteria, what in- 
oculation is in the case of epidemic and 
contagious disease. 

There are few boys born in the Twen- 
tieth Century who will not know all that 
is fascinating about sex life. It may be 
unveiled to them in a pure and noble 
manner, or it may be divulged in a 
crude way by older boys, or it may be 



FOREWORD 

hurled at them in coarse and vulgar 
word or deed. It would seem to be 
every way desirable that it should come 
in the right way by the right people at 
the right time. 

It is this belief that has led to the 
making of this book. 

A. E. Winship. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. Is This Youb Boy? 1 

II. Whose the Besponsibility ? .... 10 

III. That Which Must Be Told .... 20 

IV. The Time of the Telling 30 

V. The Basis of Confidence .... 41 

VI. Dangers . 51 

VII. Safeguards 61 

VIII. Standards of Judgment 73 

IX. Habits 81 

X. Activities 90 

XI. Daydreams 100 

XII. Companionships 108 

XIII. The Absent Boy . . . . ^ .... 118 

XIV. Compensations 129 



WHAT YOU SHOULD 
TELL YOUR BOY 



CHAPTER I 

IS THIS YOUR BOY? 

With an expression strained and 
tense, he waited at the manager's desk. 
In his capacity of errand boy he had 
been intrusted with a verbal message, 
and with painful realization of his 
incapacity, accentuated by a morbid 
self -consciousness, he was concentrating 
every faculty on its correct delivery. 

As he stood, awaiting his turn, a 
panic seemed to take possession of him, 
the pupils of his eyes dilated, his breath 
came in short gasps, and an involuntary 
movement of the lips indicated that he 
was striving to gain a measure of self- 
confidence by assuring himself that he 



2 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

retained a parrot-like recollection of the 
message. 

The " errand-boy' ' was thirty-one 
years old, and yet he had the peculiar 
characteristics of undeveloped youth, 
which would still stamp him as a boy at 
fifty. 

At sixteen he was graduated from a 
grammar school and the impression he 
created when he commenced business 
life was distinctly favorable. A boy of 
high principles, with some ambition, 
and a fair amount of industry, he 
gained the good-will of those with 
whom he came in contact. He was 
neither better nor worse than thousands 
of boys who start life at his age. His 
early environment had been that of the 
average American boy; his educational 
equipment was at least sufficient for the 



IS THIS YOUR BOY? 3 

work allotted to him. In a word, he 
seemed to have a fair start, and an even 
chance of ultimate success. 

At first, everything went well. 
Those to whom he was directly respon- 
sible found him an earnest and consci- 
entious worker, willing and, if anything, 
a trifle over anxious to please, and felt 
justified in advancing him, as occasion 
offered, to minor positions of responsi- 
bility. 

The first opportunity for advance- 
ment came within a year. A vacancy 
occurred, and because the boy had been 
diligent and painstaking in the per- 
formance of his duties, it was felt that 
he had earned the right to promotion. 
Another opportunity followed rapidly 
on the heels of the first and although he 
was not in direct line for this position, 



4 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

the same reasons prompted Lis second 
promotion. 

He was what is regarded as a "good" 
boy — he did not smoke nor swear ; he was 
truthful and, so far as was known, he 
had no bad habits. Great expectations 
were entertained for him, and yet to the 
surprise and disappointment of his 
friends and associates, he did not con- 
tinue to make good. 

It was not that the work in this posi- 
tion was beyond him; his previous 
training should have enabled him to 
master it without difficulty; it was not 
that he was denied instruction and ad- 
vice: both were to be had freely for the 
asking; it was simply that he seemed 
to have lost his grip on himself. 

It was observed that he was subject 
to fits of absent-mindedness — long peri- 



IS THIS YOUR BOY? 5 

ods during which his attention wan- 
dered and he brooded on things wholly 
unconnected with his duties. From 
these abstractions he roused himself 
with a start and applied himself to his 
work with redoubled energy, seeking, 
apparently, to make up for lost time. 
A shyness, hitherto unnoticed, became 
evident and with it a pronounced disin- 
clination to meet a steady gaze. At a 
simple question he blushed like a girl, 
and his whole attitude was timorous 
and apologetic. 

As time passed, the periods of ab- 
straction became more frequent. An 
enfeebled mentality resulted; he lost 
the power of concentration, and the 
most elementary propositions were 
soon utterly beyond his grasp. His 
memory, too, was defective, and details 



6 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

of his daily work, the doing of which 
should have become automatic, were 
overlooked at the proper time, if not 
entirely forgotten. For some reason 
not apparent he was incapable of meas- 
uring up to the requirements. 

"John is a good boy," said his em- 
ployers, "it is a pity that he — " The 
sentence was unfinished, but the look of 
intelligence that passed from one to the 
other supplied all that was missing. 
The trouble, if not absolutely known, 
was at least shrewdly guessed. The 
symptoms too plainly suggested the di- 
agnosis. 

The qualities, however, which had 
brought the boy into favorable notice at 
the start were still in evidence. A 
strong desire to do right was apparent. 
His habits of punctuality were kept up. 



IS THIS YOUR BOY? 7 

When not lost in daydreams, he was 
as earnest as ever in his work. He did 
not join in the gossip of the office, and 
he kept aloof from the horseplay and 
the buffoonery indulged in by boys of 
his own age. 

It was to this, supplemented perhaps 
by the fact that there was a pathetic ap- 
peal in his ineffectual strivings, that he 
owed his retention on the pay roll of 
the firm. He was allowed to resume 
first one and then another of the sub- 
ordinate positions, but when in due 
course he arrived at the bottom — his 
starting point of three years previous 
— it was found that even in that posi- 
tion he was incapable. His duties had 
been of a clerical nature, and there was 
now nothing involving mental work that 
he could do. A consciousness of his 



8 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

liability to err made errors inevitable, 
while the frequency of his mistakes 
served to aggravate his mental confu- 
sion. All self-confidence was gone, and 
with repeated failures came a lack of 
self-respect, which manifested itself in 
his personal habits as well as in his at- 
titude towards others, with the result 
that he became an object not only of 
pity but of aversion. 

At this point a place was found for 
him as messenger. It was another 
step downward, but his only chance. 

The "boy" still carries packages, and 
performs other duties of a more or 
less mechanical nature. Careful to the 
point of fear about the smallest thing, 
he knows neither relief nor rest until it 
is done, and yet his attitude is that of 
one who anticipates admonition or mer- 



IS THIS YOUR BOY? 



its reproof. And he will never be other 
than he is. 

At sixteen, a boy of potentialities and 
promise; in manhood, hopeless. 



CHAPTER II 

WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY? 

Good fathers! Bad boys! 

These terms are so common in their 
use that they find general acceptance, 
and that some bad boys are the sons of 
good fathers does not even suggest a 
doubt as to the correctness of the classi- 
fications. Yet it may not be idle to 
consider whether it is necessary to re- 
fer to a father as good, and whether a 
boy is properly labeled bad. 

The parent oyster allows its off- 
spring, the larvae, to take their chance 
on the surface of the water with the 
multitude of other creatures which 
swarm there. The larvae may be de- 
10 



WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY? 11 

voured by their natural enemies, or they 
may swim away, perhaps five miles 
from their place of birth, sink to the 
bottom, and, attaching themselves to 
any rocky surface, proceed to develop 
into oysters: the parent oyster neither 
knows nor cares. 

But man is not an oyster. 

Some fish — sardines and mackerel, 
for example, having selected a suitable 
place for spawning, deposit their eggs, 
and fertilize them. This done, they as- 
sume no further responsibility for their 
offspring. They leave the hatching to 
the heat of the sun and the action of the 
waves. The fry must look out for them- 
selves, and escape, if they can, the vo- 
racity of larger fish of other species and 
the cannibal instincts of their own pro- 
genitors. 



12 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

But man is neither sardine nor mack- 
erel. 

The cowbird and the cuckoo surrep- 
titiously lay their eggs in the nests of 
smaller birds, to whom they delegate 
the labor of incubation, of feeding, and 
of caring for the nestlings until fledged. 

But man is neither cowbird nor 
cuckoo. 

There are some men — too many by 
far — who are as elementary in parental 
instincts as the oyster and the fish, and 
quite as willing to shirk parental obli- 
gations as the cowbird. 

Some give themselves no concern 
whatsoever regarding their children — 
caring neither for their spiritual nor 
for their temporal welfare; but these, 
happily, are few. 

Others feel that in making due pro- 



WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY? 13 

vision for the elemental needs of the 
child's existence — food to eat, clothing 
to wear, and a house for shelter — they 
have done their whole duty. For the 
rest, they are content to leave to a pa- 
ternal government the secular educa- 
tion of the child, and to the priest or 
parson its moral and ethical develop- 
ment. 

Such fathers are just one remove 
from the cowbird and the cuckoo. 

But, fortunately for the boys and for 
the future of the race, there are some 
parents who are unwilling to delegate 
any part of their duty. 

The child has been given existence; 
the conditions necessary to his contin- 
ued existence are assumed; it remains 
to teach him the meaning of life and 
how to live it. This they conceive to be 



14 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

the privilege of the father, as, also, his 
sacred obligation. This point of view 
involves setting before the child exam- 
ples worthy of imitation, for his first 
conceptions of life are based on obser- 
vation, and as he sees life in his own 
environment so he believes it to be. It 
involves firmness and discipline, for the 
cardinal lesson of childhood is obedi- 
ence. It involves never-failing pa- 
tience, for the lesson of life is not easily- 
learned. It involves tact to discern 
when to give reproof and when to for- 
bear, for encouragement is often more 
effective than admonition. And, above 
all, it involves a quick and intelligent 
sympathy which grows and broadens as 
the child develops. 

If, then, a man possess all these at- 
tributes coupled with the unselfishness 



WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY? 15 

that leads him to subordinate his own 
comfort to that of his children, is he not 
a good father? 

Let us see. 

The child comes into existence, so far 
as we know, not from any desire on its 
part; its wishes are not consulted and 
it is incapable of exercising any choice 
in the matter. Its birth is the result of 
the complete union of the parents — the 
natural consequence of their union in 
conjugal relationship. Hence it com- 
mences life with a balance on the credit 
side of the ledger. It has inherent 
rights to maintenance, affectionate care, 
counsel, and protection — all of which 
are comprehended in the simple term 
father. 

These rights are not universally rec- 
ognized; it has been customary from 



16 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

the days of the Roman fathers to place 
the emphasis on filial duty rather than 
on parental obligation. Nevertheless, 
parental obligations exist, and it is only 
when man renders them in fullest meas- 
ure that he is a father; when he does 
less he is a defaulter. This point of 
view may be helpful in reaching a con- 
clusion as to bad boys. 

So-called bad boys are not hard to 
find. They abound in the streets; their 
cases are tried in the juvenile courts; 
they fill the reformatories; and, grown 
a little older, they crowd the prisons. 

But they have always been bad? 

On the contrary, if it be true that 
"all men are created equal," may it not 
be true that all children are born good? 
The hardened criminal awaiting the 
chair was once an innocent child inca- 



WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY? 17 

pable of evil thoughts or deed. Did the 
change come suddenly? Was there a 
sharp dividing line between the good 
and the bad? Or, were the evil tenden- 
cies, like the good, of gradual growth? 
In the sense that bad means " want- 
ing in good qualities, whether moral or 
physical," there are no bad boys! 
There are countless examples of what is 
known as youthful depravity. But de- 
pravity simply means that there has 
been bad training to pervert or turn 
aside tendencies otherwise good. The 
boy is a center of unbounded energy 
and activity, and badness has been de- 
fined as " energy given the wrong direc- 
tion." The possibility of vice may be 
latent. This is the case with horses, 
but a horse that becomes vicious is said 
to be badly trained; he is not called a 



18 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

bad horse. This is not less true when 
stated in regard to the boy. 

It is obvious, then, in determining 
what you should tell your boy that some 
revision of previous classifications is 
desirable. A clear and distinct concep- 
tion of fatherhood is the indispensable 
condition to instruction, and the in- 
struction can be effective only as it im- 
plies a recognition of the fact that the 
boy ultimately is good or bad according 
as he has been trained. 

The boy in the opening chapter pos- 
sessed a strong desire to do right which 
manifested itself in his daily routine. 
He emerged from his most humiliating 
defeats, still manifesting a vital force 
that would not down, that could not be 
quenched. He was the unfortunate vic- 
tim of a habit which had made him un- 



WHOSE THE RESPONSIBILITY 19 

true to himself, which had sapped his 
manhood and had rendered him inca- 
pable and inefficient. Yet, at the critical 
period of his life, a word would have 
doubtless been sufficient to free him of 
the terrible heritage he was compelled 
to carry forward. 



CHAPTER III 

THAT WHICH; MUST BE TOLI> 

Educatoks point with pride to the 
ever broadening scheme of popular in- 
struction, and assert, not without rea- 
son, that never before has so much been 
taught of value to the child, to the man, 
and to the woman as there is to-day, 
and that never before has it been so well 
taught. 

Yet, while it is true that education is 
no longer restricted to the favored few, 
and that the curriculum of the public 
school, instead of being limited to a dry 
and arid cultivation of the " three R's," 
has been so enriched as to furnish a 
cultural acquaintance at least with al- 
20 



THAT WHICH MUST BE TOLD 21 

most every branch of knowledge — an 
enrichment which some maintain 
threatens with mental dyspepsia those 
required to absorb and assimilate it — it 
is equally true that the topic of para- 
mount importance to the boy finds in it 
no place. 

In all the teaching, extending from 
the playroom of the kindergarten to the 
gates of the college, absolute silence is 
maintained as to the origin of human 
life, and the processes underlying the 
reproduction of the human species. 

In zoology the boy learns something 
of the genital organs of fish; in botany, 
something of the pollination of plants; 
but when it comes to human physiology, 
he finds man presented with no refer- 
ence to this essential potentiality. 

But grammar teaches him that boy, 



22 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

man, husband, and father are mascu- 
line; girl, woman, wife, and mother, 
feminine. Is it sufficient that here shall 
begin and end his instruction in sex! 

The policy of silence on this impor- 
tant topic is not confined to the class 
room. It has been consistently adhered 
to alike by pulpit and press; while in 
the home, with few exceptions, the sub- 
ject has always been either tacitly 
avoided or deliberately evaded. 

"This policy/ ' says Havelock Ellis, 
"has been so firmly established that the 
theory of it has never been clearly ar- 
gued out. So far as it exists at all it is 
a theory that walks on two feet pointed 
opposite ways: sex things must not be 
talked about because they are 'dirty*; 
sex things must not be talked about be- 
cause they are 'sacred.' " 



THAT WHICH MUST BE TOLD 23 

Another author, writing more than 
thirty years earlier, says: "In what- 
ever concerns the subject of sex, cus- 
toms are blindly considered sacred, 
and evils deemed inevitable. The mass 
of mankind seems moved with anger, 
fear, or shame, by any effort made to 
consider seriously this fundamental 
idea. It must necessarily come for- 
ward, however, in the progress of 
events, as the subject of primary im- 
portance. As society advances, as 
principles of justice and humanity be- 
come firmly established, as science and 
industry prepare the way for the most 
perfect command of the material world, 
it will be found that the time has come 
for the serious consideration of this 
first and last question in human wel- 
fare; for the subject of sex in its com- 



24 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

plete human significance will then pre- 
sent itself as the great aid or obstacle 
to farther progress." 1 

That this time has arrived there can 
be no doubt. Each epoch in the worlds 
existence has to its credit some great 
advance in religion, in learning, in art, 
or in industry, by which it is character- 
ized and distinguished. These are the 
milestones of chronology. The twenti- 
eth century will be marked by future 
historians as the beginning of an era of 
world-wide recognition of the value and 
importance of prevention. The pre- 
vention of disease by inoculation and 
sanitation; the prevention of bigotry, 
superstition, and class-hatred by the 
spread of education; the prevention 
of immorality by the establishment of 

i Elizabeth Blackwell — Counsel to Parents. 



THAT WHICH MUST BE TOLD 25 

high standards of purity and chastity. 

It is with this last phase of preven- 
tion that society is vitally concerned: 
the creation of correct standards and 
the pursuit of essential ideals. 

But standards of morality can be- 
come effective factors in a boy's life 
only as they are founded on absolute 
knowledge, and it is an encouraging sign 
of our times that the necessity for im- 
parting this knowledge is being more 
and more recognized. It is no longer a 
question of whether something shall be 
told, but rather of what must be told, 
and how it shall be imparted. 

On these points, however, there is a 
wide divergence of opinion. Yet if the 
principle of prevention be kept clearly in 
view, the problem is not difficult of solu- 
tion. Sooner or later, the source of life 



2G WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

as springing from the difference of 
sex will become known to the boy. If 
this knowledge comes to him in a secret 
way, possibly accompanied by obscene 
language and lewd suggestions, question- 
ings resulting in impure thoughts take 
possession of him, and these in turn im- 
pel him toward the unclean act. 

The ultimate end, then, of the pro- 
posed instruction must be to safeguard 
the boy from acquiring the habit of un- 
clean thought in order that he may not 
be impelled toward the unclean act. 
This is best reached by putting him in 
possession of true knowledge just as 
soon as he is ready for it; by so filling 
his mind with pure thoughts that there 
shall be no room for the conception of 
impure ideas. 

The boy must be told simply and nat- 



THAT WHICH MUST BE TOLD 27 

urally the genesis of life and of repro- 
duction. This will form the subject of 
his first questionings and the knowledge 
imparted will be the basis of his further 
instruction. Incidentally, in connection 
with lessons on neatness of person and 
dress, he must be taught the importance 
of keeping the sexual organ absolutely 
clean, and at the same time tactfully cau- 
tioned against handling it unnecessarily. 
Later on, when the instinct of sex is 
about to manifest itself, the nature and 
function of the sexual organ must be ex- 
plained. There must be no half -teach- 
ing, no half-truths. " Forewarned is 
forearmed" — but he who is only half 
taught is ill-prepared for this battle of 
life. With the background of his previ- 
ous instruction in the origin of life, he 
can now be shown that the organ of gen- 



28 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

eration is provided for a very special 
purpose, and that to use it for any 
other is degrading, debasing, and unnat- 
ural. 

These facts constitute the fundamen- 
tal teaching for the boy. To lay out a 
course of instruction equally suitable 
for all boys is impossible: the father 
who is in full sympathy with his own 
boy will perceive how much or how little 
to tell. 

"I do not say," says Ellice Hopkins, 2 
"that pure knowledge will necessarily 
save ; but I do say that the pitcher that 
is full of clear spring water has no room 
for foul. I do say that you have gained 
a great step, if in answer to the offer of 
enlightenment which he is certain to re- 
ceive, you have enabled your boy to ac- 

2 Ellice Hopkins — The Power of Womanhood. 



THAT WHICH MUST BE TOLD 29 

quit himself of the rough objurgation: 
'Oh, hold your jaw! I know all about 
that, and I don't want any of your 
rot.' " 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE TIME OF THE TELLING 

Sex questions are no longer taboo. 
The right of the child to know all about 
himself — hitherto denied him — is now 
conceded. Therefore, since countless 
generations of children have been 
wronged vicarious atonement must be 
made to the child of to-day by putting 
him into instant and full possession of 
the facts, regardless of his ability to 
apprehend them. This process of rea- 
soning is doubtless responsible for the 
idea that the instruction of the boy in 
matters of sex should commence at the 
cradle, and that the minutest details of 
the physiological processes of life and 

30 



THE TIME OF THE TELLING 31 

reproduction may with propriety be re- 
vealed to him almost as soon as he shall 
have acquired the ability to walk and 
talk; its weakness lies in its failure to 
take into consideration the capacity of 
the child's mind. But extreme measures 
follow closely in the wake of all great 
movements. 

Scarcely less extreme is the view held 
by many that this teaching may properly 
begin at the age of five or six, and that 
botany and zoology should be made the 
media of instruction. In a book pur- 
porting to be written for boys of this 
age, may be found the following: "When 
they (the father and mother natures) 
are found together in the same flower, 
the pollen of flower dust from the male 
anthers is easily conveyed to the female 
stigma, and thus passes down the style, 



32 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

etc." This may be very pretty, but is 
it within the comprehension of the child? 
Are pollen, anther, stigma, and style 
found in his vocabulary? Are they 
words that mean anything to him? 
Take another example from the same 
book: " After the mamma fish has laid 
her eggs, the papa fish swims gently over 
them, at the same time expelling from 
his body a slimy substance, and in this 
way the eggs are fertilized." These 
" simple explanations" which do not 
really explain, not only presuppose pow- 
ers of generalizing not usually pos- 
sessed by boys of five or six, but assume 
a knowledge of biological processes not 
always possessed by the parent. 

On the other hand, to attribute birth 
to divine origin — to say that "babies 
come from God" — is hardly less an eva- 



THE TIME OF THE TELLING 33 

sion than the old-time fairy tale of the 
stork and, to the extent that it is less 
intelligible to the child, it is the less 
credible. 

All snch roundabout explanations are 
but evidence of the difficulty experienced 
in attempting to break away from the 
trammeling traditions of the past. The 
idea that "sex things are dirty' ' has be- 
come so deeply rooted that even the au- 
thor just quoted feels it necessary to 
say to his audience of little boys: "Now 
we do not blush or regard it impure to 
study the wonderful wisdom and power 
which God displayed in the creation of 
Adam and Eve," thus suggesting and 
arousing the very thoughts against 
which he professes to guard. ' ' Blushes ' ' 
and "thoughts of impurity" have no 
more place in moral instruction than 



34 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

they have in the life of a six-year-old. 
As a matter of fact it is doubtful if 
any good purpose can be served by be- 
ginning systematic instruction at the age 
of six. If the boy ask questions — as all 
boys and all children will as soon as they 
can talk — he should be answered in a 
plain straightforward manner. If he 
ask, " Where did I come from?" it 
should be a simple matter to reply: 
"You are a part of your mother and 
also of me." If the additional informa- 
tion, "Before you were born, you grew 
inside the body of your mother," be 
volunteered, it will fully satisfy his curi- 
osity, and not improbably anticipate a 
question already shaping itself in the 
mind, in which case it is not likely that 
he will pursue the matter further. On 
the other hand, should he evince a de- 



THE TIME OF THE TELLING 35 

sire to know more, it will do no harm if 
an attempt be made to show him how 
parental duties and obligations are di- 
vided and shared: the mother's part in 
his pre-natal state, and early infancy, 
and the father's part in providing for 
his sustenance and education. 

A little wholesome " preaching' 9 of 
this character may, by making the sub- 
ject seem dry and uninteresting, serve 
to curb his curiosity. It can do no 
harm — it may do good. 

Assuming that his questions have been 
treated as perfectly natural, ordinary 
questions, and that the answers have 
been given without hesitation, without 
mystery, and without pledge of secrecy, 
there need be no fear that the boy will 
repeat what he has been told. It is 
original discoveries that he takes pride 



3G WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

in telling to others, and " secrets" that 
he finds difficult in keeping to him- 
self. 

In any event, all questions of child- 
hood are reasonable ; they are, moreover, 
the surest index to the state of the child 
mind — the safest guide to the parent as 
to when knowledge may be imparted. 
But they demand reasonable answers, 
and they demand truthful answers: to 
deceive a child once is to destroy his con- 
fidence. 

There comes a time, however, when 
information must be given unasked. 
From six to ten the boy is fairly safe, 
physically and morally. His develop- 
ment at this age corresponds closely to 
that of the three months old puppy. He 
is no longer weak and helpless : his eyes 
are open; he is full of energy and un- 



THE TIME OF THE TELLING 37 

tiring activity, and he romps through the 
day without a care and with scarcely a 
thought of matters ulterior to his activi- 
ties. But from eleven to fourteen re- 
markable changes take place. New pow- 
ers unfold, new instincts and appetites 
rapidly develop, feelings of sex, hitherto 
dormant, assert themselves, and it is all 
new to the boy. This has been called 
the "period of ferment" and it is filled 
with dangers for him — dangers which 
menace alike his moral and his physical 
well-being. He is no longer the inno- 
cent sexless child; he is a boy, and like 
most boys of this age, he is prurient. 
His whole being thrills and vibrates with 
emotions for which he has no name, and 
for which he has no explanation. 

But he is not yet bad; not yet de- 
praved: on the character of the counsel 



38 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

given to him at this time depends 
whether he shall manfully resist and 
conquer the promptings of his animal 
nature, and become the absolute master 
of his every impulse, or whether he 
shall weakly yield to temptation — sur- 
render in advance his coming manhood — 
sell, as it were, his noble birthright for a 
mess of pottage, and become the slave of 
his desires, and the author of his own 
destruction. 

But this " period of ferment' ' is only 
the precursor of another epoch in the 
boy's life: the early years of adoles- 
cence. This has been described as the 
"period of crisis." It is in these years, 
from fourteen to eighteen, that the boy 
develops, mentally, morally and physic- 
ally, by leaps and bounds. It is in 
these years chiefly that he exhibits the 



THE TIME OF THE TELLING 39 

characteristics that are to make or mar 
his future life. 

Surely this is the time to speak plainly 
— to tell him all about this new force, to 
explain to him what it means, and to 
show him how it may be controlled. To 
pass this period in silence, assuming 
that — like measles and whooping cough 
— it is something to which all boys are 
subject, and which most boys survive, is 
cowardly in the extreme if not absolutely 
criminal. To say, as some do, "Let him 
alone, if he must know, he will find out, 
and that all too soon,'' is worse than 
folly. Ignorance is not a safeguard, 
and even if it were the boy cannot be 
kept in ignorance. Sooner or later the 
information withheld by the parent will 
come to him, and it will come, not as a 



40 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

guiding light, showing him the pitfalls 
and guarding his footsteps, but rather 
as a will-o '-the-wisp, leading him on un- 
til he is lost in the slough of despond. 



CHAPTER V 

THE BASIS OP CONFIDENCE 

It is not the alleged difficulty of the 
subject that deters so many parents from 
speaking; it is not its "sacredness" nor 
its ' 'nastiness " that ties the tongue: it 
is the difficulty experienced in approach- 
ing the boy. 

The average father does not hesitate 
to dictate to him on matters of behavior 
and general conduct: this is a parental 
prerogative which he exercises freely 
and, as a rule, is unwilling to delegate 
to others; but let him think of even 
broaching the one subject of para- 
mount and vital importance and im- 
mediately he becomes conscious of an 

41 



42 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

embarrassment amounting to diffidence. 
The reason for this is not far to seek. 
Precepts of physical cleanliness and 
rules of deportment are based on out- 
ward, visible facts — there is no gainsay- 
ing them. It matters not, therefore, 
whether they be presented as reasonable 
conclusions or as arbitrary dicta: they 
are emanations of parental authority, 
and as such they must be accepted and 
observed. Moral instruction, on the 
other hand, deals with the boy's inner- 
most self, with his unspoken thoughts, 
and with emotions and feelings of which 
he may be only dimly conscious. There 
is nothing tangible, nothing definite, 
nothing positive; on the contrary, since 
boys differ so greatly in their develop- 
ment, all is involved in doubt and un- 
certainty. 



THE BASIS OF CONFIDENCE 43 

Herein lies the difficulty and the dan- 
ger. The father may be deeply con- 
scious of his responsibility, may fully 
recognize the boy's right to know, and 
may yearn for a heart to heart talk, and 
yet refrain from talking simply because 
he hesitates to assume conditions which 
may or may not exist. The trouble is, 
he does not know the boy. 

But the boy is not hard to know. He 
is neither secretive nor reserved. By 
nature, he is open-hearted and frank. 
His instincts are essentially friendly, 
and, in his early years at least, he is 
filled to overflowing with filial affection. 
In a word, the conditions indispensable 
to free intercourse are native to him, 
and if there be a barrier between the 
father and the boy it is not the boy's 
fault. 



44 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

Obviously, then, we must look else- 
where for the cause of embarrassment. 
Now, since neither the subject nor the 
boy is responsible for it, it would not 
seem unreasonable to assume that the 
father may be. 

The great obstacle to free intercourse 
is lack of confidence, and this is largely 
due to the parental attitude. Koman 
law made the father all powerful. He 
exercised absolute control over his chil- 
dren. He was entitled to all they 
earned, and he had the power to sell 
them in discharge of his own debts were 
he so disposed. He could even, in his 
character of household judge, put his son 
to death. Modifications of these condi- 
tions have come about slowly. Cruel 
and inhuman punishments are no longer 
regarded as proper aids to discipline; 



THE BASIS OF CONFIDENCE 45 

there is a growing disposition to ques- 
tion the soundness of the principle 
' ' spare the rod and spoil the child, ' ' and 
it is no longer the invariable rule that 
"children should be seen, not heard.' ' 

Nevertheless, even the modern father 
is not yet prepared to descend from the 
lofty pedestal on which precedent and 
tradition have enthroned him. "Wil- 
liam, if I do not speak to you," said a 
father of the previous generation, "you 
may know it is because I have no fault 
to find," and since parental communica- 
tions in his own youth invariably took 
the form of censure or reproof, he him- 
self, with the best of intentions, hands 
them down undiminished in rigor and 
unsoftened in tone. He still feels that 
he is immeasurably above the boy, nor 
finds it easy to tolerate anything tend- 



46 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

ing to lessen the distance. It is the as- 
sumption of this attitude of superiority 
and the fact that unconsciously he im- 
poses it on the boy that makes confi- 
dence between father and son difficult. 

It follows, therefore, that if anything 
is to be accomplished, there must first 
be a readjustment of existing relations. 
The father must descend from his high 
place and meet the boy just where he is. 
He must make it his business to get 
thoroughly acquainted with him, and this 
means more than a slight or superficial 
knowledge; it implies familiarity, inti- 
macy, and fellowship. This is not some- 
thing to be accomplished in an hour, a 
day, or a month. Nor can it be post- 
poned until a certain period is reached. 
It is not safe to say: "He is only a 
boy; when he grows up we will be com- 



THE BASIS OF CONFIDENCE 47 

panions," — the process of getting ac- 
quainted cannot be begun too early: 
"procrastination is the thief of oppor- 
tunity,' J and when the boy shall have 
grown up, the chances are he will select 
his own companions, and that the father 
will not be one of them. 

The father who would be the boy's 
chosen friend and companion in later 
years must be his comrade and his chum 
in boyhood. 

It may involve a little unbending to 
serve as high private in the ranks un- 
der a boy commander; it may cause a 
little stiffness in unused muscles to climb 
tall trees in search of nests and eggs ; it 
may accelerate the heart beat to chase 
the elusive butterfly; it may require 
some mental effort to acquire the collect- 
or's interest in coupons and campaign 



48 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

buttons; but these are some of the 
things that go to make up the boy's life, 
and the display of a sympathetic inter- 
est in them by an older person is often 
the open sesame to his confidence. 

It may be objected that the activities 
mentioned are with most boys merely 
passing fancies — evanescent as breath 
on a mirror — and that a man engrossed 
with the cares and responsibilities of 
business can ill afford to lend himself to 
the ardent pursuit of a momentary 
whim; but there is nothing ephemeral 
about the relationship sought to be es- 
tablished. This is to be the groundwork, 
the fundamental principle or condition 
of intimate and unrestrained daily in- 
tercourse. This makes it all eminently 
worth while. 

Yet to enter enthusiastically into the 



THE BASIS OF CONFIDENCE 49 

boy's sports and pastimes is not suffi- 
cient. It establishes a community of in- 
terests and thus becomes a passport to 
confidence. But confidence carries with 
it the idea of assurance, implicit trust 
and faith, an affectionate and unques- 
tioning belief which does not demand 
proofs but rests in the integrity, verac- 
ity, justice and friendship of another. 
And this cannot be forced. It germi- 
nates slowly, grows and develops gradu- 
ally as the boy finds by experience that 
he can at all times rely on the father for 
accurate information and intelligent ad- 
vice ; for real help and sympathy in 
times of trouble and difficulty. 

The basis of confidence, then, is the 
unquestioning belief in you, faith which 
impels the boy from a feeling of loyalty, 
readily and cheerfully to assent to the 



50 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

truth of anything you may tell him; an 
affectionate regard which not only leads 
him to seek your counsel and advice, but 
makes him wish to regulate his life in 
accordance with it. This you must es- 
tablish, because on no other basis can 
your talks with the boy be effective. 

And the time has come for plain speak- 
ing. 



CHAPTER VI 

DANGERS 

Your boy is in danger. His moral 
and physical welfare is imperiled. 
This is no time to mince words. This 
is no time to beat around the bush. The 
presence of poison in a prescription is 
indicated by the startling skull and 
cross-bones, and warnings of impending 
danger are written large in flaming let- 
ters of red. 

You know that masturbation has 
blighted many promising lives. You 
know that it is a habit which gradually 
grows on the boy and that if he be not 
diverted from it, it will assuredly mas- 
ter his powers of mind and become irre- 

51 



52 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

sistible. You know that if persisted in 
it may sow the seeds of consumption, 
and that it will inevitably sap his 
strength and destroy his manhood. You 
know that it is a habit which means men- 
tal and moral degeneration, and that ul- 
timately it leads to mental dissolution. 
And knowing these things you must 
speak, and speak with all the force and 
earnestness at your command. You 
cannot afford to hesitate for fear of sug- 
gesting things which may not have oc- 
curred to him. 

It is not safe to assume that your boy 
is purer, better, or stronger than other 
boys ; it is not safe to assume that your 
training and your teaching have placed 
him beyond the reach of temptation. 
Much as we should like to believe other- 
wise, the fact is that few boys attain the 



DANGERS 53 

age of puberty without having mastur- 
bated more or less. At first the prac- 
tice may be commenced innocently 
enough — it is when it is persisted in that 
it becomes a vice; it is in this that the 
danger lies, and it is against this that 
you must safeguard your boy. 

The evil effects of self-indulgence on 
physical health are frequently exagger- 
ated. Many a boy has been led through 
the horrors of an anatomical museum 
by parent or guardian in the hope that 
the fear thus excited would prevent his 
forming the habit, or cause him to desist 
from it if it were already formed. 

This is a mistake. The passion of 
youth is rarely, if ever, deterred by 
fear. 

Moreover, while it is true that owing 
to the rapid development of new func- 



54 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

tions which takes place at the age of 
puberty the power of resistance is low- 
ered, and there is a greater liability to 
sickness and disease, the recuperative 
powers of youth at this age are so strong 
that if masturbation be checked before 
it becomes a fixed habit, no serious or 
lasting injury will result. 

But the evil effects of this practice on 
the moral well-being of the boy cannot 
be exaggerated. This view is not more 
emphatically indorsed by moralists and 
preachers than by physicians. 

"In the vast majority of cases, mas- 
turbation does little harm to the indi- 
vidual, except in regard to his morale. 
It unmans him, makes him untrue to 
himself and cowardly. The young man 
is over-shy, he shrinks from a steady 
gaze, blushes readily, and seems to be 



DANGERS 55 

conscious of having done something un- 
manly and little." 1 

"We must especially bear in mind the 
claims which an excessive sexual indul- 
gence makes upon the attention, how 
hard it is for the sexualist to do good 
work and how likely he is to miss de- 
sirable intellectual and emotional inter- 
ests, and also the probability that his 
health will be impaired and his disposi- 
tion demoralized. ' ' 2 

Nor is it the moral well-being of the 
boy only that is jeopardized. What the 
boy is, the man will be. If the founda- 
tion of a vigorous constitution be not 
laid in youth, the man will be feeble and 
ineffective, unable to endure hardship or 

iVan Buben & Keyes — Surgical Diseases of the 
Geni to-Urinary Organs. 

2 Encyclopaedia Medica Edinburgh. 



66 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

to resist disease ; and if strength of char- 
acter and purpose are not developed and 
built up between the years of twelve and 
eighteen, there can be little hope that 
the man will be able successfully to with- 
stand the temptation which shall come 
to him. 

It is perhaps the menace to the men- 
tal health of the boy that is most to be 
feared, and that is hardest to guard 
against. 

It is possible by insisting on the strict 
observance of health rules, by seeing 
that the boy has food, rest and exercise 
in proper amounts and at proper times 
to build up a constitution capable of 
withstanding almost any excesses. It is 
possible so to develop his moral nature 
that he shall acquire a loathing for self- 
pollution and bend every energy to 



DANGERS 57 

overcome the habit if it has been ac- 
quired. These things are comparatively 
easy. It is not so easy to guard him 
against the quacks and the charlatans. 
These vampires know your boy if you do 
not. They know that manhood is his 
most cherished possession, and they 
know that if they can insinuate the 
thought that he has in any way impaired 
it he will fall an easy victim to their 
wiles. 

If you do not know the character of 
the literature they disseminate, take 
home the pamphlet thrust into your 
hands by some indiscriminate distribu- 
tor, and read it carefully and thought- 
fully for the purpose of determining 
what effect it would be likely to have on 
your boy should it fall into his hands. 
You will find that the effects of self- 



58 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

pollution — ■ ' youthful indiscretion ' ' is 
the euphemism frequently employed — 
are luridly depicted. The "miserable 
victim of folly" is made to feel that he 
is "no longer a fit object for society, 
but a complete imbecile"; "impotent"; 
"a man only in form but not in sub- 
stance, without the power of exercising 
his functions either of mind or body." 

The effect of this kind of literature 
can hardly be imagined. 

The boy for whom it is intended is su- 
persensitive. He has just commenced 
to exercise the faculty of judgment and 
his judgment of himself is apt to be se- 
vere. He has a morbid consciousness of 
sin ; he sees an enormity of offense in a 
trivial fault, and as a result is likely 
to be disheartened. It matters little 
whether he is practicing masturbation 



DANGERS 59 

without any thought of wrong or any 
realization of the consequences involved ; 
or whether he is striving to conquer the 
habit; or even whether he has gained 
complete control of it : the effect of such 
literature is equally terrifying and de- 
moralizing. By his own act the boy has 
jeopardized his manhood and he feels 
that he is irretrievably lost. "Impo- 
tent," " unfit for society," "the sem- 
blance of a man" ring constantly in his 
ears and sound the knell of hope and am- 
bition. 

Plunged thus into the very depths of 
abject despair, brooding by day and 
night on his condition, feeling that he is 
marked and recognized wherever he goes, 
is it any wonder if ultimately he ful- 
fills the direful prognosis of the quack 
and becomes "a complete imbecile!" 



60 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

It is only by forestalling the quacks 
that you can save your boy. It is only 
by putting him in possession of the 
truth that you can guard him against 
perversions and distortions. 

And this you must do. 



CHAPTER VII 



SAFEGUARDS 



We have seen that true knowledge is 
the best safeguard the boy can have, and 
that it is at the age of puberty that he 
stands most in need of this defense and 
shield. Do you know whether your boy 
has reached this critical period; and, if 
so, just when he entered it? Mothers 
are fully informed on this point in so 
far as it relates to girls, but the igno- 
rance of many fathers is astonishing and 
deplorable ; astonishing because the 
knowledge is easily gained — deplorable 
because ignorance is responsible for 
mistakes and misunderstandings which 
often work irretrievable damage. 

61 



62 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

Pubescent means covered with short 
soft hair or down, and the appearance 
of hair on the face, nnder the armpits 
and on the lower part of the abdomen 
is at once an unmistakable and a very 
apparent sign that the boy has arrived 
at the age of puberty. An earlier sign, 
and one quite as readily observable, 
is the breaking or changing of the 
voice. 

You know that when he has arrived at 
this age he is subject to temptation, and 
you are justified in assuming that if he 
has not yielded before he may yield 
now. ' ' To ignore or deny the wide prev- 
alence of the evil, in the way often 
done, is sometimes honest ignorance, but 
is also often affectation and even a form 
of hypocrisy and cant. 1 And the fact 

i G. Stanley Hall — Adolescence. 



SAFEGUARDS 6.3 

that while the danger is great, the dis- 
ease is not difficult to diagnose, nor the 
remedy hard to apply, renders parental 
negligence all the more culpable. 

The symptoms, as we have seen, are 
well known to the quacks; but they are 
equally well known and have been clearly 
defined by the highest medical authori- 
ties. 

"The gross evidence of such injury 
would be sought for in the skin and in 
muscle and nerve — pallor, flushings, and 
pimples, tremor and restlessness, going 
on to loss of sleep, with perhaps the addi- 
tion of perverted appetite for food and 
drink." 2 

"The immediate effects of self-indul- 
gence in young children number among 
them circulatory disturbances of both 

2 Encyclopaedia Medica Edinburgh.. 



64 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

motor and sensory nature, irritability, 
insubordination, and outbursts of inex- 
plicable anger. Besides these manifes- 
tations there are usually a decided bash- 
fulness and reserve in society, averted 
gaze, and lack of manly bearing. There 
is, too, a tendency to avoid company or 
the joining in youthful sports, but rather 
to retire alone or with a single com- 
panion, upon whom the suspicion of be- 
ing an accomplice should rest. In study 
hours there is a dullness, drowsiness, 
preoccupation, and lack of application 
with often pronounced weakness of 
memory and absent-mindedness." 3 

"Children given over to onanism may 
have some general symptoms such as 
great thirst, pallor of the face, emacia- 

s Chas. W. Allen — Twentieth Century Practice of 
Medicine. 



SAFEGUARDS 65 

tion, languor, debility, insomnia, palpi- 
tation, breathlessness, a dry cough, ver- 
tigo, gastralgia, dark and gloomy 
thoughts, or neurasthenia. Sometimes 
we see an absolute inertia, and semi- 
idiocy, with loss of memory, hallucina- 
tions of sight and hearing and dilations 
of the pupils, all phenomena dependent 
upon an excessive loss of nervous 
force." 4 

"They (boys) have a sheepish, hang- 
dog expression; their eyes are deep set, 
they incline to melancholy broodings, to 
sitting by themselves and reading over 
a fire rather than to joining their com- 
panions at play. They become absent- 
minded and their memory seems defect- 
ive. The hand is apt to be cold and 
moist in the palm ; the skin is often pal- 

4 Jules Comby, Paris. 



66 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

lid; the innocent frankness of youth is 
absent." 5 

These are the carefully thought-out 
statements of reputable physicians. 
The books from which they are culled 
are usually to be found in public libra- 
ries and they are therefore accessible 
to you. They furnish criteria by which 
you may determine accurately the condi- 
tion of your boy, and they furnish abun- 
dant texts — if such are needed — for the 
talks which you should have with him. 

But this is not all. The same authori- 
ties not only indicate the symptoms by 
which the habit may be recognized, but 
also point out how it may be prevented, 
prescribe the cure, and carefully explain 
the principles which dictate the treat- 
ment recommended. 

5 Van Buren & Reyes — Surgical Diseases of the 
Genito-Urinaiy Organs, 



Safeguards 67 

"The most satisfactory results are 
obtained by treating the physical and 
general condition of the patient. Bene- 
fit is likely to result if one can induce 
the patient to desist from masturbation, 
and can impress on him the fact that his 
trouble is curable and of no grave sig- 
nificance. The patient should lead an 
active life, taking a considerable amount 
of outdoor bodily exercise, so that at the 
close of the day he experiences a well- 
marked sensation of muscular fatigue. 
The patient should be instructed to arise 
immediately on awakening in the morn- 
ing, to empty his bladder, and to take a 
cold bath. His diet should not be re- 
stricted in amount but all indigestible 
and stimulating articles of food must be 
avoided. The patient should be in- 
structed not to take a large amount of 



68 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

fluid at night. Constipation, if present 
must be corrected. Attention should be 
directed to the patient's mental state. 
His mind should be fully employed with 
some healthful occupation, he should be 
encouraged to desist from all sexual 
thought s." 6 

"It is not wise to try to terrify him 
out of his habit by brilliant and exag- 
gerated statements of the possible mis- 
ery he may bring upon himself if he does 
not stop. This is appealing to a base 
motive, fear of an indefinite evil in the 
future, and it is often inadequate, for a 
healthy boy cannot realize what it means 
to be sick, and consequently is not afraid 
of it. The method of treatment that is 
most effective and at the same time the 
one that requires the most force to carry 

« Encyclopaedia Medica Edinburgh. 



SAFEGUARDS 69 

out, is to elevate the boy out of his bad 
habit, to shame him, to make a man out 
of him, to reason with him and talk to 
him, openly and honestly, without re- 
serve or mysticism; to sympathize with 
him, not wound him; to study him and 
treat him morally.'' 7 

" Straightforward sympathetic com- 
mon sense is what is required. By im- 
pressive reasoning the boy's mind can 
usually be led into proper channels. 
Since it has been shown that mental 
equilibrium is interfered with more by 
derangement of the procreative powers 
than by that of any other function, all 
precautions should be taken to prevent 
morbid brooding over real or fancied 
seminal losses." 8 

7 Van Bueen & Keyes — Surgical Diseases of the 
Genito-Urinary Organs. 

s Chas. W. Allen — Twentieth Century Practice of 
Medicine. 



70 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

All this is in pleasing contrast with 
the terrifying statements of the quacks 
— seminal losses or "nocturnal emis- 
sions ' ' are their main stock in trade — the 
bug-a-hoo with which they seek to 
affright and appall. And too often they 
succeed, and the pity is that they are 
most successful with boys who really de- 
sire to do right. Such boys when shown 
that self-pollution is unmanly, degrad- 
ing, and debasing, require little urging 
to abandon the habit, but when they feel 
that however much they may strive 
against it, however much they may bring 
it under control in their wakeful mo- 
ments, they are powerless against it in 
sleep, they lose heart and hope and are 
filled with consternation and dismay. 

This may be the case with your boy. 

But you can and you must save him. 



SAFEGUARDS 71 

The medical authorities cited will tell 
you that these emissions are "physio- 
logical events''; that "in men who prac- 
tice continence, the nocturnal escape of 
seminal fluid at variable intervals of 
time is a perfectly normal occurrence" 
and that instead of being an evidence of 
depravity it is rather a proof of chas- 
tity. Self-interest would prompt them 
to side with the quack and the charla- 
tan — to magnify the danger and disease, 
to make difficult and obscure the treat- 
ment, that the cure might be the more 
glorious and, incidentally, not less profit- 
able to them. But with noble unselfish- 
ness, actuated solely by a regard for 
others, the reputable medical men of to- 
day — the family doctors — discuss this 
subject in terms so simple that he who 
runs may read; and every word rings 



72 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

true with sincerity and earnestness. 

Your interest is greater than theirs. 
It is your boy — not ' ' a patient ' ' — that is 
in danger. Are you going to let him 
fight his battle alone and in fear ; or, are 
you going to give him the helping hand 
of sympathy? 

The sympathy and encouragement you 
extend at this time will prove his great- 
est safeguard, and will be gratefully and 
appreciatively remembered. 



CHAPTER VIII 

STANDAKDS OF JUDGMENT 

The boy is beginning to exercise a 
newly developed faculty — the faculty of 
judgment. The unquestioning accept- 
ance of statement as fact which, charac- 
terized the years of childhood has disap- 
peared, and in its place has come a dis- 
position to compare statement with fact, 
to discriminate and to distinguish. It is 
here that he most needs correct stand- 
ards. Hitherto he has depended upon 
you for everything. He has been subject 
to your guidance and control. You have 
regulated every detail of his life — his 
eating, his sleeping, his recreation, and 
his work. All that he has done has been 

73 



74 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

done under your direction and his atti- 
tude has been one of obedience and un- 
reasoning compliance. 

But now — whether you will or no — 
whether he is conscious of it or not — 
he is disposed to strike out for himself, 
to blaze a new and independent trail, to 
take his life into his own hands, and be- 
come the architect of his own career. 

He needs a plan of life. He needs a 
blue print with the building line so 
clearly delineated that in his structure 
there may be harmonious relation be- 
tween the parts, that each may have its 
equal or proper share ; he needs a square 
that his building may be true and just 
and fair and honest ; he needs a level that 
there may be no inequalities, that all may 
be characterized by poise and balance; 
he needs a plumb that he may preserve 



STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT 75 

an exact perpendicular — a perfect up- 
rightness; and he needs a rule that he 
may accurately determine the extent, the 
value, and the quality of his work. 
These are the standards of judgment 
which your boy must have. 

Have you provided them? 

"Parents usually educate their chil- 
dren merely in such a maimer that how- 
ever bad the world may be, they may 
adapt themselves to its present condi- 
tions. But they ought to give them an 
education so much better than this, that 
a better condition of things may be 
brought about in the future. ' ' * 

What is the object of the training you 
are giving to your boy! Is it your aim 
to enable him merely "to take care of 
himself," or does your scheme of edu- 

i Kant, 



76 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

cation take a broader and more unselfish 
view and comprehend the care of others, 
also? 

What do you think of a man who 
glories in the fact that by establishing 
in his youth relations of a certain char- 
acter with a "wholesome parlor maid" 
he was " saved" from temptation, and 
smugly boasts that, as a result, he came 
to his wife ' ' clean at any rate, if not ab- 
solutely pure 1 ' ' Yet the case is not un- 
common. Men have been known to go 
still further and give expression to the 
hope that their boys might be equally 
"fortunate." These are the men who 
were taught only how "to take care of 
themselves." 

You have other ideas for your boy. 
Just now your concern is about him- 
self. You are anxious that no act of 



STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT 77 

his shall cause him to blush or be 
ashamed; that nothing that is low or 
mean shall enter into his thoughts or 
find expression in his words. You en- 
tertain high hopes for him, but you have 
no desire to see him an angel or a saint ; 
you wish, rather, that he may develop 
into a strong, virile man — a noble man 
in the truest sense, brave, resolute and 
chivalrous. Your aim for him is not the 
negative goodness of the cloistered 
monk, but fullness and richness of life. 
And it is because you realize that the 
cleaner the life of the boy, the greater 
the mental and moral enrichment of the 
man, that you are so solicitous of the 
present. 

"A healthy boy of eight years, who, 
like most boys, comes out occasionally 
with a remark that opens a little window 



78 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

into an unsuspected corner of his mind, 
said to his father, 'Tell me something to 
go by. ' Questioning disclosed that what 
he wanted was a motto. Two of his boy 
friends had mottoes and were proud of 
them. It seemed that these mottoes 
were consulted often, and that a good 
many important points were settled ac- 
cordingly. Our boy felt he was handi- 
capped, and was a little ashamed. But 
behind that shame the father detected 
something more subtle — a groping sense 
of ideals. And to the task of choosing 
a motto that the boy would understand, 
and that would, as it were, grow up with 
him, he gave earnest thinking. His 
choice was this: 'Know the truth and 
speak the truth.' 
"That motto, he decided, had integrity 



STANDARDS OF JUDGMENT 79 

and was unassailable. He repeated it 
to the boy, explaining in simple words 
that by knowing the truth was meant 
looking squarely at whatever you came 
upon, and not allowing what you wanted 
to think, or what someone else wanted 
you to think, make you think what was 
right was wrong, or vice versa. In a 
way this was doctrine of very modern 
fashion, and proffering it to the boy 
was much like placing in his hands a 
two-edged sword with which he probably 
would cut himself badly before he 
learned how to use the weapon with dis- 
cretion as well as valor. But the father 
reasoned that the rashness that brought 
about these wounds would soon correct 
itself, and that the habit which practice 
would breed in the boy would make him 



80 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

resistless in attacking whatever was un- 
worthy in himself/ ' 2 

Have you given your boy " something 
to go by!" 

2 Churchill Williams in Lippincotfs Monthly 
Magazine, November, 1911. 



CHAPTER IX 

HABITS 

Good conduct is largely a matter of 
habit. The potent factor is the unself- 
ish will to do right — a determination 
which gains its impulse neither from 
fear of punishment nor from hope of re- 
ward. This desire to do right simply 
because it is right involves the idea of 
duty and obligation, and seeks the well- 
being of the many rather than the hap- 
piness and advancement of the individ- 
ual. To be effective, however, it must 
become active and imperative. It is not 
enough to "know the truth" or to know 
the right: the corollary should be 
"speaking the truth" and doing the 

81 



82 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

right. Virtue is the habit of doing right 
and someone has said that, reduced to 
its simplest terms, the process of train- 
ing children is the process of forming 
habits. 

The dominating power of a bad habit 
is very generally recognized, but that a 
good habit is not less dominant is some- 
times overlooked. A boy acquires the 
habit of stooping over his work and goes 
through life round-shouldered, but a 
German shoemaker who has spent the 
early years of his manhood in the army 
may sit all day bent over the last and 
still retain erect carriage and military 
bearing. And what is true of habits of 
body is equally true of habits of thought 
and of conduct. 

The habits which your boy forms be- 
fore he is twenty-one will shape and 



HABITS 83 

determine his life from that time on. 

Since the cultivation of correct habits 
cannot be commenced too early, it fol- 
lows that whatever you may have al- 
ready accomplished is so much clear 
gain, and that if you have as yet done 
nothing you must begin now. 

The habit of obedience to authority 
must become instinctive. This, as we 
have seen, is the cardinal lesson of child- 
hood. Conscience in later years will 
take the place of authority, and if the 
boy has not acquired the habit of yield- 
ing unquestioning obedience to you, he 
can hardly be expected to have a natural 
inward impulse to obey the dictates of 
"the still small voice." 

The habit of cleanliness — one of the 
first to be impressed on the child — must 
be cultivated. "Wash and be clean' ' 



84 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

can hardly be reiterated too often, or too 
emphatically enforced. The boy must 
be made to feel that to be really clean 
he must be clean in every part, and in- 
ternally as well as externally. The 
medical authorities quoted in a previous 
chapter indicate the importance of habits 
of internal cleanliness as a preventive 
of immoral acts and in the treatment of 
disorders resulting from immoral prac- 
tice. 

For similar reasons, early rising 
should be made habitual. Your boy will 
be saved from many temptations if he 
form the habit of getting out of bed im- 
mediately he awakes. Moreover, since 
this habit is closely associated with the 
habits of punctuality and industry, by 
thus promptly getting up he will gain 
the impetus for his day's work. 



HABITS 85 

The habit of self-reliance must be cul- 
tivated early. The boy may be fortu- 
nate enough to receive help from time to 
time, but in the great crises of life he 
will have to depend on himself. You 
are developing him on an efficiency ba- 
sis, but ability to do things is not all- 
sufficient: there must be that conscious- 
ness of power which characterizes the 
man who has learned that he can safely 
depend upon himself. The diffident "I 
wish" will inevitably go to the wall, but 
the masterful "I can" will surmount 
every difficulty. 

The habit of self-control is condi- 
tioned to a great extent on the habit of 
self-reliance. Indeed, the former is im- 
possible until the latter has been devel- 
oped. The boy has his battles to fight 
and his greatest enemy, often, is himself. 



86 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

You may admonish, exhort, counsel, or 
encourage, but the fighting must be done 
by him, and to be successful he must ac- 
quire the habit of controlling himself, his 
impulses, his actions, and his appetites. 
That the habit of self-control may in- 
fluence not only his words but his ac- 
tions and his thoughts, it is imperative 
that the habit of pure thinking be 
formed. This is not easy, especially at 
a time when new feelings and new emo- 
tions are running riot in his being and de- 
manding mental recognition. Yet when 
once the habit of pure thinking is estab- 
lished evil thoughts will hardly find 
lodgment, and it is by no means impos- 
sible so to fill the boy's mind with 
thoughts of "the true, the beautiful, and 
the good" that other thoughts shall be 
positively distasteful and offensive. 



HABITS 87 

Your boy's attitude toward women 
should be that of chivalrous protection. 
But if he is to maintain the best tradi- 
tions of knighthood and, as he grows up, 
become "generous, just and gentle; a 
redresser of the wrongs of widows and 
orphans, and a protector of ladies" he 
must, in turn, be page and squire in boy- 
hood. He must learn the countless little 
courtesies demanded by good-breeding, 
and acquire the habit of doing them 
gracefully and cheerfully, even though 
at times it involve self-sacrifice. He 
must do more than this. He must learn 
that true courtesy means more than 
mere politeness — it implies reverence 
and respect, and to render these to all 
women, regardless of station or condi- 
tion, must become second nature to him. 

These are some of the habits you must 



88 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

help your boy to acquire. They are not 
the only ones. Habits are " bundles of 
memories which enable us to do again 
what we have done before," and the 
things you wish your boy to do again 
and again until the doing becomes al- 
most automatic, are the things you must 
make habitual. 

But there are bad habits as well as 
good. " Virtue is the habit of doing 
right"; vice, the habit of doing wrong. 
And while it is important in the highest 
degree to cultivate good habits, it is no 
less important to overcome bad habits. 
Prof. Bain says : "The peculiarity of the 
moral habits, contradistinguishing them 
from the intellectual acquisitions, is the 
presence of two hostile powers, one to 
be gradually raised into the ascendent 
over the other. It is necessary, above 



HABITS 89 

all things, in such a situation, never to 
lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong 
side undoes the effect of many conquests 
on the right. The essential precaution, 
therefore, is so to regulate the two oppos- 
ing powers that the one may have a se- 
ries of uninterrupted successes, until 
repetition has fortified it to such a de- 
gree as to enable it to cope with the op- 
position under any circumstances." 

To recapitulate: the boy must be 
helped to acquire good habits, and en- 
couraged to overcome bad habits, until 
the performance of good and the avoid- 
ance of evil become not only habitual but 
volitional. 



CHAPTER X 

ACTIVITIES 

The relation which the daily activi- 
ties of the boy bear to his mental and 
spiritual being is not always recognized. 

Yet the things which he does with his 
hands, and the way in which he does 
them, are potent influences in determin- 
ing his attitude towards life. 

The desire "to do things' ' is inher- 
ent in all children. It may crop out in 
the making of mud pies ; it may find ex- 
pression in the construction of moated 
castles on the sands, or in the erection of 
mansions from building blocks of stone 
and wood. It may disclose itself in 
crude drawings, in boat-building, in 

90 



ACTIVITIES 91 

kite making, in the hewing of trees, or 
in the making of gardens. But what- 
ever form it takes it is there. No con- 
ception is too grand — no undertaking, 
too great. The boy delights in doing 
things, and nothing is too difficult to at- 
tempt. 

But his energy and ambition are not 
unlikely to run away with him. When 
the zest of doing takes hold of him he is 
apt to overdo. Feeling neither fatigue 
nor weariness, he may frequently over- 
rate his newly acquired but still unde- 
veloped strength, with the result that a 
reaction sets in. Periods of unusual ac- 
tivity and persevering industry are fol- 
lowed by periods of inertia and listless- 
ness. He is spasmodic in his work 
rather than consistent and steady. "He 
works by spells' ' has been your obser- 



92 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

vation, and the fact has occasioned you 
not a little concern. But there is noth- 
ing radically wrong. He has simply 
overtaxed himself. He has become 
tired. He is suffering from the rebound 
and is asking himself "What's the 
use?" — a question which you, yourself, 
have asked more than once, and left un- 
answered. 

And right here is your opportunity — 
your chance to shape and direct his ca- 
reer. 

By many it is urged that what the boy 
needs is a definite aim and ambition and 
the reasons adduced in support of this 
view are cogent and seem conclusive. 
But however good the theory may be it 
does not work out in practice. There 
are boys who at ten, twelve, or fourteen 
aequire "a definite aim, and ambition" 



ACTIVITIES 93 

and order life accordingly, but they are 
exceptions. At this age the normal boy 
is anything but steadfast in his objects 
and intentions. His aspirations are in- 
fluenced to a great extent by his reading 
and by his environment. The exploits 
of Paul Jones, of Farragut, of Schley, 
or of Dewey may awaken a love of the 
sea, and instantly the navy becomes his 
objective. The military achievements 
of Grant, Sheridan, Stonewall Jackson, 
or Lee, coupled with the fascinations of 
a uniform, may fill him with an appar- 
ently unquenchable desire to be a soldier. 
Most boys at one time or another have 
had such aspirations. With others the 
idea of being postman, chauffeur, fire- 
man, or policeman has spelled happiness 
and success. For others the profession 
of law or medicine has seemed to offer 



94 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

the greatest inducements. And not a 
few have elected to be farmers, artisans, 
or storekeepers. 

The inclinations and ambitions of 
boys are subject to change from year 
to year, and this adds not a little to the 
unrest and ferment which characterizes 
the period of adolescence. With each 
change of objective necessitating a fresh 
start, a beginning all over again, there 
comes a consciousness of wasted effort 
and futile endeavor and, as a result, the 
boy becomes disheartened and indiffer- 
ent. 

But you can help him. If you cannot 
compel or even induce him to aim at life 
with a rifle, you can at least see to it 
that every discharge of his shot gun 
shall yield results. 

Suppose the boy does vacillate in his 



ACTIVITIES 95 

choice of a vocation — suppose he de- 
cides to be this to-day ; that, to-morrow ; 
and something quite different the day 
after — these shiftings are but indica- 
tions of changing ideals, and not infre- 
quently they are expressions of mental 
development. They are natural to the 
boy and you can utilize them to his bene- 
fit and make them a source of power and 
strength instead of weakness. 

Does he desire to be a soldier? Make 
him a good soldier. Let him learn obe- 
dience and discipline. Impress upon 
him the importance of a soldierly bear- 
ing. Instill lessons of intrepidity, cour- 
age and fortitude. His enthusiasm will 
make him eager for counsel, quick to 
accept advice, ready to follow out sug- 
gestions. The Boy Scout movement ex- 
emplifies the possibilities of this train- 



96 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

ing. If the fever exhaust itself, and it 
doubtless will, he will come out of it with 
an erect, military carriage, and with 
some ability to control not only others 
but himself. 

If his inclinations are toward the 
navy, let him see how small a thing it 
is to "be rated simply A. B. Let him un- 
derstand that plain, ordinary, every-day 
arithmetical processes are employed in 
the science of navigation, that a sailor 
must know geography, and that if he 
aims to pace the quarter-deck, he must 
demonstrate in examinations that he is 
qualified not only to command a vessel 
and its complement of men, but tactfully 
and diplomatically to represent his na- 
tion in any and every emergency. And 
whether he go to Annapolis, whether he 
sign as an enlisted man, or whether he 



ACTIVITIES 97 

entirely abandon the idea, under the 
stimulus of his ambition he will, at least, 
add to his store of knowledge, and learn 
another lesson of self-control. 

But in your boy's make-up there may 
be nothing heroic. He may see you — 
his father — busied in the arts of peace. 
He may see you painting a door, paper- 
ing a room, or making a garden, and 
he may decide that as his father is, so 
he will be. If you have established the 
right relations, this will be his natural 
impulse. He bears your name, you are 
his ideal, and he desires to follow in 
your footsteps. This, at any rate, is his 
present ambition, though circumstances 
may modify it considerably or change it 
entirely. 

Meantime, there are moral lessons in- 
volved in brushing in the paint, in 



98 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

matching designs in wall paper, and in 
a weedless garden laid out in straight 
lines. Do not let your boy get the im- 
pression that by reason of your years 
and your experience you are the only 
one qualified to do this work. You 
learned, and learned by experience: tell 
him he can do the same. He may ulti- 
mately decide to be a lawyer or a doc- 
tor ; but in a well-papered wall, free from 
blisters and irregularities, and in a well- 
laid-out garden he will find, not cause 
for discontent and discouragement, but 
inspiration to a higher plane of work. 
He will be a better lawyer, or a more 
efficient doctor from having learned in 
youth that "a thing worth doing, is 
worth doing well. ' ' 

Moreover, success in manual effort 
encourages a belief in success in mental 



ACTIVITIES 99 

control, and both involve a belief in 
one's self, and when you have developed 
this in your boy you have developed 
self-reliance without which he can 
neither hope nor expect to gain the mas- 
tery of himself. 



CHAPTER XI 

DAY-DKEAMS 

Do yon notice in your boy a tendency 
to "dream" over his work? Have you 
ever taken the trouble to inquire into the 
nature of his dreams f Are they simply 
idle wishes — the wishes that would put 
beggars on horse-back and make princes 
of paupers? Or, are they visions of the 
possibilities the future holds for him? 

There is a vast difference between the 
dreams of great ambition and of attain- 
ment and the fruitless imaginings that 
lead only to self-delusion. 

The progress of all ages, in art, in 
science, in literature, and in industry, is 
marked by the achievement of dreamers. 
100 



DAY-DREAMS 101 

Wireless telegraphy, the telephone, the 
phonograph, the automobile, and the 
aeroplane are but a few instances of the 
dreams of ages realized in the nine- 
teenth century. The Great Northern 
System, which has opened up a vast ter- 
ritory and developed untold wealth, was 
the dream of James J. Hill, and it is said 
that he devoted two whole years to giv- 
ing order and coherence to his dream be- 
fore even a spadeful of earth was 
turned. 

If your boy snatches from his work a 
minute now and a minute then in which 
to project himself into the future and 
dream dreams of high endeavor, it is 
well, "and it doth not yet appear what 
he shall be." 

There is, however, no more baneful 
habit than that of day-dreaming — giving 



102 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUK BOY 

free rein to vagrant wishes. Nor is 
there a habit more easily acquired, nor 
more difficult to break. In his day- 
dreams the boy sees himself a multi- 
millionaire — he does not stop short of 
this because, as many a one has been 
heard to say: " While we are wishing we 
might as well wish for a lot." Or, per- 
haps it is not great wealth with all its 
possibilities that attracts him; he may 
prefer to imagine himself the leading 
tenor of his day, more famous than any 
who have preceded him; or, it may be 
that his bent is to athletics and he con- 
ceives himself excelling all others in 
high jumps, and making unheard-of 
records in Marathons. Or, since it is so 
easy to become great in day-dreams, he 
may elect to excel in many lines and 
conceive himself a modern Admiral 



DAY-DREAMS 103 

Crichton. One thing is certain, what- 
ever he may choose, he recognizes no 
period of hard work, thrift, economy, 
wise investment, close study, or rigorous 
training between him and the realization 
of his desires. He wishes and the thing 
is done ! 

And then the awakening — bringing 
with it disillusion, discontent, and dis- 
appointment ! 

Suddenly he discovers that he is not 
wealthy, that he is not famous, and that 
the price of success is untiring industry 
and unwavering perseverance, and be- 
cause the reality is so different from the 
dream he becomes discouraged and apa- 
thetic. Earnest effort is irksome, work 
of any kind is distasteful; the mind 
which in dreams has moved with the ut- 
most rapidity, conjuring up one fantas- 



104 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

tic possibility after another, now refuses 
to get down to steady work. The habit 
of wandering having been acquired, con- 
centrated attention on a given subject 
is impossible. 

But the mischief does not end here. 
When once the mind is freed of all re- 
straint, other ideas than those of self- 
aggrandizement may, and frequently do, 
take possession. Daydreams have left 
the boy with a distaste for serious study, 
and for the moment he is without occu- 
pation and without definite purpose. 
"Men are usually tempted by the devil," 
says a Spanish proverb, "but the idle 
man positively tempts the devil," and 
what is true of the adult is not less true 
of the unformed boy. Someone has 
said: "Many a boy murders his own 
soul in the effort to 'kill time.' " His 



DAY-DREAMS 105 

body is at rest and for this reason his 
brain is all the more active. A remark 
recalled, the recollection of a suggestive 
picture, some memory of a story heard 
or read — anyone of these may be the 
spark to kindle a train of thought that 
shall become a consuming flame. One 
thing is certain: the boy who has thus 
allowed his imagination to become pol- 
luted by impure thoughts falls an easy 
victim to the temptation to bodily pollu- 
tion to which such thoughts inevitably 
tend. 

What, then, is your duty toward the 
daydreamer? How best may the help- 
ing hand be extended? 

To what extent have you sought to 
share your boy's thoughts? " Don't 
dream! Get to work," you have said 
many a time — what do you know about 



106 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

his dreams? The powers of imagination 
are his, and he will use them. Let him 
use them; but take care that you give 
them right direction. If you would have 
his dreams crystallize into deeds, the re- 
sponsibility is yours to see that his 
dreams are of the kind you wish real- 
ized. It may not have occurred to you 
that you can do much to prevent the 
formation of the habit of idle dreaming 
by leaving the boy little or no time in 
which to indulge in it. This is accom- 
plished by the simple expedient of plan- 
ning out his day's work in advance — by 
having a set time for everything and in- 
sisting on punctuality. "This habit," 
says a well-known writer, "of keeping 
the mind employed, will soon destroy the 
common habit of reverie; the soul will 
be too busy for reverie, and then if she 



DAY-DREAMS 107 

gains nothing by change of occupation, 
by way of acquisition, she gains the sat- 
isfaction that she is not wandering off 
on forbidden ground.' * 



CHAPTER XII 

COMPANIONSHIPS 

By nature man is gregarious. There 
are hermits and recluses. They are 
usually misers or misanthropes. They 
are never normal. If man travels or 
lives alone, it is from sheer necessity; 
not from choice. His instinct is to flock 
with his kind; to form groups, compa- 
nies, clans, tribes, nations. 

The countless organizations that 
spring up in suburban and rural com- 
munities are but expressions of this gre- 
garious impulse. 

A development is started in the wil- 
derness — streets are laid out, lots staked 
off, men come, one by one, from all quar- 

108 



COMPANIONSHIPS 109 

ters. To the extent that home-making 
is the object of each, there may be said 
to be a common interest. 

But home is essentially personal. It 
is the dwelling place of the individual — 
the abode of the family of one. Yet no 
sooner do three or four homes take 
shape and find tenants than we have so- 
ciety. 

Clubs, associations, and fraternities 
are formed to take the individual out of 
the privacy of the home — the object of 
his migration — and merge him in a more 
or less public body. This is the history 
of man in all ages. There is an ever- 
present desire to get together, and the 
flimsiest excuse is usually an all-suffi- 
cient reason for yielding to this inclina- 
tion. 

Man demands company and fellow- 



110 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

ship. It is not good, nor is it natural 
for him to be alone. He craves inti- 
mate, friendly association with his kind, 
and solitary confinement as a penalty has 
for him greater horrors than physical 
pain. 

What the man is, the boy was. Man 
is the sum of the accumulations of the 
boy. Or, in other words, the boy is sim- 
ply an earlier edition of the man — an 
edition in which mistakes may be cor- 
rected, or errors perpetuated. 

The man may sometimes be self-cen- 
tered and self-sufficient ; the boy is rarely 
so. The boy without associates is in- 
complete — abnormal. It is as natural 
for him to have companions as it is for 
him to breathe, eat, sleep, run, or jump. 
It is a necessary part of his life. The 
desires that actuate man in forming co- 



COMPANIONSHIPS 111 

teries and cliques are not less impelling 
forces with the boy with whom they take 
their rise. The man's club finds its 
counterpart in the boy's "gang." 

To run with the gang is the ambition 
of most boys, especially young boys. 
The gang, as a general thing, has no pre- 
amble, no written constitution, and no 
by-laws. The leader usually is the 
strongest or the boldest member, and he 
is a law unto himself. By reason of his 
strength, he enforces his dictates and the 
gang follows cheerfully, willingly, and 
enthusiastically where he leads. 

But a gang is not necessarily bad. 
We have seen, in an earlier chapter, that 
so-called bad boys are those whose train- 
ing has perverted tendencies otherwise 
good. It is, so, many times, with the 
gang. Loyalty, obedience, and honor 



112 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

there must be in all gangs, and these 
surely are admirable qualities — beauti- 
ful and ennobling. They are the qual- 
ities we look for in our army and navy. 
They are at the basis of the loftiest 
patriotism, and they are the indis- 
pensable condition to all good service. 

Enmity may exist between different 
gangs; but there is also much friendly 
rivalry. There is a spirit of emulation 
which is easily capable of being turned 
to good account. 

Outside agencies, societies and associ- 
ations are accomplishing much good for 
the boy of the present generation by 
taking the gang as organized and giving 
it proper direction. But this work 
could be done more efficiently by the 
home and the father. 

Because he "trails with the gang" 



COMPANIONSHIPS 113 

your boy is not necessarily tough. But 
you should know something about the 
gang and the members that compose it. 
Forbush quotes the story of the wife of 
Jacob Eiis who, finding that the "gang" 
spirit had taken hold of her boy, joined 
the gang. "She 'gave in wood' to the 
election of bonfires, and pulled the 
safety-valve upon all other plots by en- 
tering into the true spirit of them — 
which was adventure rather than mis- 
chief — and so keeping them within safe 
lines. She was elected an honorary 
member, and became the counselor of 
the gang in all their little scrapes. ' ' 
There is a suggestion in this for you. 
You welcome at your house the 
monthly whist which furnishes relaxa- 
tion for your own spare moments. Do 
you welcome as cordially the gang to 



114 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

which your boy looks for diversion? 
The one has just as much a place in the 
home as the other. To quote Forbush 
again: "The very apparent self-suffi- 
ciency of the boy at this period causes 
the parent to discontinue many means 
of amusement and tokens of affection 
which were retained until now. The 
twelve-month infant is submerged in 
toys, but the twelve-year-old boy has 
nothing at all at home to play with. The 
infant is caressed until he is pulplike 
and breathless, but the lad who is hun- 
gry for love and understanding is held 
at arm's length." 

Companions are as necessary to the 
happiness of the boy as are toys to the 
happiness of the child, but with compan- 
ions as with toys, some are helpful and 
good while others are harmful and dan- 



COMPANIONSHIPS 115 

gerous. You would not dream of letting 
the three-year-old play with matches and 
gunpowder, with edge tools, or with 
loaded firearms, yet to allow a twelve- 
year-old to associate with unfit compan- 
ions may bring about a catastrophe in- 
finitely more far-reaching in its effects. 
But in order to judge and to estimate 
your boy's friends, you must know them. 
You must know them, not merely by 
sight, not merely by name, not as a body 
only, but as individuals. It is hardly 
less important for you to establish 
friendly, intimate relations with your 
boy's chums than it is with the boy him- 
self. And the same means are available. 
If you make the experiment, the prob- 
ability is that when the boys get to- 
gether more than one will voice the sen- 
timent: "Your Pop's all right!" And 



116 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

this will certainly not lessen your influ- 
ence with your own boy. 

Moreover, if you give cordial welcome 
to your boy's friends, you will have lit- 
tle occasion to worry about the unde- 
sirables. Boys have a sense of the eter- 
nal fitness of things with which often 
they are not credited, and your boy will 
be the first to perceive which, if any, of 
his comrades, do not fit in with the 
home environment. He will not be in- 
clined to press an invitation on those 
whose presence is an offense to mother, 
sisters, or father, nor will he be apt to 
seek their companionship outside of the 
home circle. 

There is usually nothing haphazard in 
the boy's choice of friends. He seeks 
those who possess qualities he himself 
lacks, and when he discovers that these 



COMPANIONSHIPS 117 

qualities are not admirable, his interest 
ceases. 

Home is the great crucible for friend- 
ships, and those which do not stand the 
test will, in the end, have little attraction 
for the boy. 

Someone has said that the compan- 
ionships formed by the boy may bless 
or blast his career, and it is this that 
makes them a matter of utmost concern. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE ABSENT BOY 

The boy is away at school. For the 
time being he is removed from your im- 
mediate control. His training and 
guidance, hitherto your duty and pe- 
culiar prerogative, must now be taken 
up and carried on by others. Up to this 
point his education has been a source of 
pleasure. Some anxiety there has been, 
of course; some disappointments, too, 
which possibly brought discouragement 
in their train. There were times when, 
for all that appeared on the surface, the 
care and training you have given might 
almost as well have been withheld. Men- 
tally and physically he grew rapidly; 

118 



THE ABSENT BOY 119 

morally and ethically the changes were 
so gradual as to be almost impercep- 
tible. 

But a glorious optimism characterizes 
the attitude of the father toward the son. 
If this year the boy has not done so well, 
next year he will surely do better; it is 
easy to believe that he was handicapped, 
to find some all-sufficient excuse for fail- 
ure. There are always mitigating cir- 
cumstances, and he is rarely so bad but 
that he might be worse. "Hope springs 
eternal" in the parent's breast. And 
so, though the progress has been slow, 
though there have been setbacks and re- 
lapses necessitating new beginnings and 
fresh starts, you have taken not a little 
pleasure in the training. The growth, 
though so gradual as to be hardly dis- 
cernible, has been there, and from time 



129 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

to time there have been disclosures on 
the part of the boy which have filled you 
with ineffable gladness and strength- 
ened and confirmed your faith in him. 

And now that he is away your respon- 
sibility is not ended. Share it you must, 
perforce ; but it is far from your desire 
to shift it entirely. 

By some it is held that the most suit- 
able time for " plain speaking/' either 
by word of mouth or by letter, is when 
the boy first goes away to school. And 
if it so happen that there have been no 
heart to heart talks, no previous instruc- 
tion, something should certainly be at- 
tempted at this time. It will not be 
easy — the conditions necessary to make 
such a talk or such a letter either easy 
or effective are lacking — but however 
difficult it is you must undertake it. 



THE ABSENT BOY 121 

You cannot safely assume that another 
will take up and satisfactorily perform 
a duty essentially your own, and you 
dare not let the boy go out from home 
without chart to warn him of impend- 
ing danger and without compass by 
which to shape his course. There are 
breakers ahead, currents which may 
carry him out of his bearings and rocks 
on which he may be dashed to pieces. 
If he suffer shipwreck and become a 
hopeless derelict, you will always have 
a feeling that primarily you were re- 
sponsible. But if he shall come safely 
into the haven of decent manhood, he 
will ever gratefully recall your counsel, 
given at a critical moment. 

But whether you are in the position of 
being at length compelled suddenly to at- 
tempt something which you have weakly 



122 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

postponed or, whether yon have estab- 
lished relations which make talking easy 
and writing unnecessary, the boy's going 
away is a serious matter. It means that 
you are taking final leave of the boy you 
have known. It is not a case of "till we 
meet" but of "good-by" — absolute and 
irrevocable. When the boy returns you 
may expect to renew an old friendship; 
you will find that you have to form a new 
acquaintance. A change has taken 
place. There is a demand — clear and 
unmistakable, though unexpressed— for 
a readjustment of relations which must 
be recognized. The boy has traveled. 
His environment has been enlarged. He 
has seen a new world and, in so far as 
he has held his own with others, he has 
conquered it. Liberty Bell has sounded 
in his ears, and he is inclined to assert 



THE ABSENT BOY 123 

his independence. This may disclose 
itself in a lack of respect hitherto unno- 
ticed; in a tendency to resent anything 
in the nature of a caress ; or in an air of 
superiority assumed towards sisters and 
younger brothers. It is a subtile change. 
Woman's intuition is quick to perceive 
it, and not improbably his mother will 
feel it keenly while yet you are barely 
conscious of it. In any case, it is there. 
Do what you will you cannot prevent its 
taking place. 

There is, however, no reason why you 
should not anticipate it — no reason why 
— knowing that it must come — you 
should not utilize it to bring you into 
closer relations with the boy. Though 
he go away, it is possible for you to keep 
closely in touch with him. The mail 
service is good — why not use it? If the 



124 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

principals of correspondence schools 
can keep accurate record of the expand- 
ing intelligence of distant pupils whom 
they have never met, it should not be 
difficult for you to watch the develop- 
ment of an absent boy whom you know 
well and with whose antecedents you are 
intimately acquainted. If your letters 
have the right tone, they will strike a 
responsive chord. It is, at any rate, 
well worth trying. 

In the home circle, child and adult are 
sharply divided. The line of demarca- 
tion extends not only to interests and ac- 
tivities but to conversation. Children 
are not allowed to take part in the coun- 
cils of their elders because they "do not 
understand"; their opinions are not en- 
titled to respect because "they do not 
understand. ' ' All of this may be true. 



THE ABSENT BOY 125 

But when the boy gets away he finds that 
he is on a par with other boys. He not 
only understands what they understand 
but feels that he himself is understood. 
He feels that at last he is somebody, and 
that his own personal opinion counts. 
He is no longer passive but active, and 
his daily progress in studies and sports 
seems to justify the belief that he is able 
to do and to think for himself — a belief 
which he is very ready to entertain. 

This suggests the syllabus of your 
" correspondence course.' ' You must 
scan his letters as though they were ex- 
amination papers; not for the purpose 
of detecting errors, but to note progress 
and development, and this you must be 
prompt to recognize and praise. Do not 
adopt the heavy father pose, and load 
your letters with weighty admonitions: 



126 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

what the boy needs is friendly interest 
which concerns itself with his thoughts, 
his studies, and his daily doings. "I 
will even lay aside my age, ' ' wrote Lord 
Chesterfield to his son, " remember 
yours, and speak to you as one man of 
pleasure would to another." This must 
be your attitude. Forget that he is your 
son, who up till now has been subject to 
your authority and has bowed to your 
will, and learn to regard him as a friend. 
Treat him as an equal and you will be 
surprised to find how heartily he will re- 
spond. If he display a little bumptious- 
ness, do not fall into the error of saying, 
as so many do: "What he needs is a 
good thrashing." If it were in your 
power to put the thought into effect, it 
would be fatal to any hope you might 
entertain of influencing him. 



THE ABSENT BOY 127 

It would be far better at this time to 
treat him as though he were superior : 
he will find his place in due course, and 
his respect and affection for you will be 
deepened by the discovery of the fact 
that instead of seeking to put him there, 
you have allowed him to find it for him- 
self. Among those of his own age, the 
boy is an equal, and yet you will find him 
disposed to choose companions older 
than himself. If he have an early love 
affair the girl will surely be several 
years his senior and, in all probability, 
seriously inclined. Life is very real to 
him and, at this stage, anything ap- 
proaching frivolity jars and repels. 

But notwithstanding all his self-asser- 
tion, deep down in his inner conscious- 
ness he is very humble. Conscious of 
his ability to walk, he yet fears to walk 



128 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

alone. He realizes the need of someone 
on whose judgment he can rely, and he 
is strongly attracted to one whose 
greater knowledge of life and more ma- 
ture years inspire confidence. His need 
is really for a "big brother' ' rather than 
a heavy father, and if in your "corre- 
spondence course' ' you have led him to 
regard you ii this light, you have noth- 
ing but pleasure to anticipate in his 
homecoming. 



CHAPTER XIV 



COMPENSATIONS 



A well-known physician once said: 
"The tendency of disease is to get bet- 
ter in spite of all we doctors can do." 
Nevertheless we vaccinate against small- 
pox, inoculate against typhoid, quaran- 
tine against yellow fever, and resort to 
all the preventive measures known to 
modern sanitation. We are not taking 
any chances. 

There is abundant evidence that the 
tendency of boys is to grow into decent 
manhood in spite of early habits, envi- 
ronment, or lack of training. Neverthe- 
less from year to year the education and 
training of youth engrosses an ever-in- 

129 



ISO WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

creasing share of public consideration. 
Again, we are not taking any chances. 

The boy whose life is outlined in the 
opening chapter is exceptional. The 
murderer awaiting the chair is excep- 
tional. The incorrigible criminal com- 
mitted for life is exceptional. Where 
one becomes a malefactor and an outlaw 
scores become law-abiding citizens. 

Good citizens far outnumber the bad, 
but you are not justified in assuming that 
your boy will be among the good. Good 
and bad had an even chance at the start. 
Nor are you justified in believing that, 
because scores of boys pass through the 
temptations of youth without apparent 
harm, your boy will come through 
scathless: he may be the one to make 
havoc of his life by self-abuse and you 
are not taking any chances. 



COMPENSATIONS 131 

" Every thing/ ' says Prof. Henry 
Davis of Yale, " points to the prob- 
ability that the problem of the twen- 
tieth century will be the moral train- 
ing of the young," and if yon are 
seeking to educate your boy in matters 
of vital importance to him, and in mat- 
ters that, between the years of twelve 
and eighteen, will most strongly influ- 
ence his life you are but recognizing the 
trend of public thought, you are but 
marching in the van of progress, you 
are but fulfilling your sacred duty as a 
father. 

After all, the training is not hard. 
"Wash and be clean" is the basis of the 
most modern instruction, as it was the 
basis of the old Levitical law, and clean 
thinking is closely allied to clean living. 
And then what? An amount of outdoor 



132 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

exercise sufficient to induce a feeling of 
muscular fatigue at the close of the day ; 
plain food, unrestricted in amount, but 
thoroughly digestible, with the minimum 
of irritating and stimulating condi- 
ments; a hard bed, light covering, and 
pure fresh air in abundance day and 
night. This, in brief, is the physical 
regimen you must prescribe. 

For the rest? You must know your 
boy. You must know him intimately — 
you must be his other self, the reposi- 
tory of his innermost thoughts, his con- 
fidant, his counselor, and his friend. 
You must talk to him fearlessly and 
frankly. You must sympathize with 
him in his difficulties, and when he fails, 
as fail he will, encourage him to fresh 
effort. You must not fear to tell him 
that the temptations which now are his 



COMPENSATIONS 133 

were once yours. An ideal which seems 
impossible of realization is discourag- 
ing, and the more the boy realizes that 
you are human like himself, the more he 
will feel drawn to you, the more unre- 
served he will be with you. Your very 
failures will be an incentive and inspira- 
tion to him; and, necessarily, the ex- 
change of experiences will bring you 
two very close together. 

The suggested training may encroach 
somewhat on your leisure time. But 
there is no better use to which you can 
put it. 

There is involved in the training of 
your boy a simple, elemental, basic idea 
of decency. You have your standards 
of conduct — every right minded man 
has. You may, or you may not, attain 
them, but they represent your ambition 



134 WHAT YOU SHOULD TELL YOUR BOY 

for the boy. You want him, first of all, 
to be a boy in the fullest sense of the 
word — not one part angel, two parts 
girl, but a whole-souled, sturdy, virile 
boy. You want him to be "a good ani- 
mal' ' with health exuding at every pore 
and with good red blood coursing 
through his veins. You want him to ex- 
cel in sports and pastimes and all manly 
activities. You want him to hold his 
own in his studies. You want him to be 
big in his aims and ideas, so big that he 
cannot stoop to anything small or belit- 
tling, and you want him to be clean in 
mind and body, so clean that he will 
shrink from anything tending to debase 
himself or degrade another. 

No matter what your own inner life 
may be, these are your aims for your 
boy, and this is the object of your train- 
ing. 



COMPENSATIONS 135 

And you will win out. There may be 
some set-backs, some lapses. You may 
not develop a Sir Galahad, but you will 
give to society an eminently decent, lov- 
able chap; and you will gain for your- 
self a friend whose companionship will 
be a source of never-failing pleasure. 
i 'Hand in hand through the woods they go, 

The father and little lad; 
Happy are all the youngsters who know 

That a boy's best chum is his dad. 

''Hand in hand through the world they go, 
Sharing each other's joy; 
Happy are all the fathers who know 
That a man's best chum is his boy." 1 

THE END 

i Hal Coffman — In New York Evening Journal. 



THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 

LETTERS FROM A FATHER 

TO HIS SON ENTERING 

COLLEGE 

By CHARLES FRANKLIN THWING, D.D., LL.D. 

pres. western reserve university. 

Bound in Cloth Net 50 Cents 

"Letters From a Father to His Son Entering College," by- 
President Charles F. Thwing, is a book which every father 
should read and give to his son whether he is going to college 
or not. It is full of sound, common sense and is practical 
rather than preachy. — Philadelphia Inquirer. 

This book should be in every home, and be made a text 
book in the colleges and universities of the land. — Denver 
Times. 

"I have read nothing lately which for wholesouled help- 
fulness to young men has impressed me more than Dr. 
Thwing's Letters. I appreciate having them in this beauti- 
ful and substantial form." — Booker T, Washington. 

"Every high school graduate should have a copy placed in 
his hands." — F. W. Atkinson. 

"I wish every student entering college could read Dr. 
Thwing's little book, 'Letters from a Father to His Son 
Entering College.' " — Benjamin Ide Wheeler. 

"Fortunate the son who has such a father! Happy the 
father whose son follows such wholesome, clean cut, inspir- 
ing advice. It must do any boy good to read such a book." 
— Henry Van Dyke, 



THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 
YOUTH AND OPPORTUNITY 

By THOMAS TAPPER, Litt.D. 

Bound in Cloth, net $i.oo. 
Graduation Edition, net $1.25. 

A Book That Will Put Many Young Men 
on the Road to Success 

Each young man and woman must ask the questions: 
"What shall I do? How can I make my mark in the world?" 

The book "Youth and Opportunity" will answer these 
questions for many thousands of readers. 

********* 

Every young man to succeed must know upon what suc- 
cess in business is based, just as every builder of a house 
must know what sort of a foundation the house requires. 
Mr. Tapper outlines the basis of success. 

* ******** 

For those that are willing to build as Burritt built, will- 
ing to use their brain for the sake of the future while using 
their muscles or their feet to make a living in the present, 
for those that believe that knowledge is worth while and that 
idleness is a disgrace, there are lessons in Mr. Tapper's 
book of highest value — for that reason we recommend it. 

Extracts from Mr. Arthur Brisbane's editorial in the N. Y. 
Evening Journal of September 28, 1912. 



THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 



TABLE OF CONTENTS OF 
YOUTH AND OPPORTUNITY 

EQUIPMENT. 



I. 
II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 


The Point of View. 

The Conduct of Life. 

Mind and Body. 

Environment. 

The Essential Education. 




EFFICIENCY. 


VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 


The Basis of Success in Business. 
The Value of a Man's Time. 
Work and Efficiency. 
Types and Dreamers. 
A Dreamer in Action. 
The Golden Key. 




CULTURE. 


XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 


What is Culture? 
The Art of Reading. 
The Reading Hour. 
The Best Books. 
The Revival of Learning. 




ACTIVITY. 


XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 


Getting a Living. 
What Money Means. 
Building a Fortune. 
Odd Moments. 
Citizenship. 




RESOURCES. 


XXIII 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 


Freedom. 
Ability. 
Perseverance. 
Happiness. 




ACHIEVEMENT. 


XXVII. 
KXVII-I. 

XXIX. 
XXX. 


At the Kiln. 
In a Laboratory. 
In a Stone Quary. 
At a Forge. 




THE MESSAGE. 


XXXI. 
XXXII. 


The Message of Art. 

The Message of the Humble. 



THE PLATT & PECK COMPANY 
THE INSPIRATION BOOKS 

EDITED BY 

THOMAS TAPPER, Litt.D. 

Bound in Cloth, Gold Stamped 
Price per Volume 35 Cents 

A SCORE OF FAMOUS MEN, by Thomas Tapper. 

WOMEN WHO HAVE MADE GOOD, by Murray Johnson. 

GETTING ON IN LIFE, by Thomas Tapper. 

WORKING FOR THE BOSS, by Henry Fields. 

THRIFT, by Thomas Tapper. 

THE BOY AS A CITIZEN, by George Cecil Baldwin. 

KEEP UP YOUR COURAGE STORIES, 

by Franklin P. Lucas. 

THE STAIRWAY OF SUCCESS, by Edmund Stover. 

THE COST OF LIVING, by Thomas Tapper. 

MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE, by William C. Bishop. 



JUN 14 1913 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 4] 

021 048 388 3 1 




1 mm 

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